Meeting with Religious and Members of Secular Institutes (2 November 1982)

On Tuesday, 2 November 1982, the Holy Father met with Religious and Members of Secular Institutes in Madrid, to whom he spoke of their “great wealth of spirituality and apostolic initiatives,” saying “The fate of the Church largely depends on you.”

Dearest brothers.

1. This evening's prayer meeting, here in Madrid, almost at the beginning of my apostolic pilgrimage to Spain, is for me a source of immense joy. It is, in fact, an encounter with much loved people, whose existence, consecrated by the three evangelical vows, "belongs firmly to the life and holiness of the Church" ( Lumen Gentium , 44).

You belong to this immense vital current that has flowed so generously in the lands of Spain, and which has made the evangelical seed bear fruit abundantly in a multitude of peoples throughout the universe. In religious families of ancient tradition and of more recent creation you have served all men, of all races and all languages, with a big heart; and, both before and now, you have vivified the two-thousand-year-old trunk of the Church.

I will tell you, in the words of Saint Paul, that “I thank my God continually for you, because of the grace of God which has been given to you in Christ Jesus, because in him you have been enriched with all gifts. . . For the testimony of Christ has been established among you" ( 1 Cor 4:6). The Pope is also grateful for the opportunity offered to him by Saint Teresa of Jesus of this meeting, because she was the opportunity I was waiting for so long to be able to speak to your heart.

You are a great wealth of spirituality and apostolic initiatives within the Church. The fate of the Church largely depends on you.

This places a grave responsibility on you and demands of you a profound awareness of the greatness of the vocation you have received and of the need to increasingly adapt to it. It is, in fact, about following Christ and, responding affirmatively to the call received, joyfully serving the Church in holiness of life.

2. Your vocation is a divine initiative; a gift given to you and, at the same time, a gift for the Church. Trusting in the faithfulness of Him who called you and in the strength of the Spirit, you made yourselves available to God with the vows of poverty, consecrated chastity and obedience; and this, not for a limited time, but for life, with an "irrevocable commitment". You have pronounced in faith a yes for everything and forever. Thus, in a society in which the courage to make commitments is often lacking, and in which many vainly prefer a life without constraints, you give the testimony of living according to definitive commitments, in a decision for God that embraces the whole of life.

You know how to love. The quality of a person can be measured by the category of his constraints. It can well be said then, and with joy, that your freedom has been freely bound to God with a voluntary service, in loving servitude. And, in doing so, your humanity has become mature. “Mature humanity - I wrote in the encyclical Redemptor Hominis - means full use of the gift of freedom, which we obtained from the Creator, at the moment in which he called into existence man made in his image and likeness. This gift finds its full realization in the unreserved donation of the entire concrete human person, in a spirit of nuptial love to Christ and, through Christ, to all those whom he sends, men or women, who have consecrated themselves totally to him according to the evangelical counsels. Here is the ideal of religious life, accepted by Orders and Congregations, both ancient and recent, and by Secular Institutes” (John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 21).

Always thank God for the mysterious call that one day resonated in the depths of your heart: “Follow me” (cf. Mt 9, 9; Jn 1, 45). “Sell what you possess, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” ( Mt 19, 21). This call and your response - which God himself with his grace has placed in your will and on your lips - lies at the basis of your personal itinerary; it is - never forget it - the reason for your every action.

Relive again and again in prayer this personal encounter with the Lord, who throughout your life continues to insist: "Follow me". I will tell you with Saint Paul: "The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable" ( Rm 11, 26). Faithful is God, who will not regret having called you.

And when in the ascetic struggle of every day continuation and conversion become necessary, remember the parable of the prodigal son and the joy of the Father. “Such joy indicates an inviolate good: a son, even if prodigal, does not cease to be a real son of his father; it also indicates a rediscovered good, which in the case of the prodigal son was the return to the truth about himself" (John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia , 6). Practice frequent confession, with the periodicity that your Rules and Constitutions recommend and indicate.

Your vocation is an essential part of the deepest truth about yourself and your destiny. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you should go and bear fruit and your fruit should remain” ( Jn 15:16). God has chosen you!

3. Your commitment, whether made long ago or perhaps recently, must always be strengthened in the Lord. I ask you for renewed fidelity, which makes your love for Christ more ardent, your donation more sacrificial and joyful, your service more humble, knowing - I will tell you with Saint Teresa of Jesus - that "whoever truly begins to serve the Lord , the least she can offer him is her own life" (St. Teresa, Path to Perfection , 11,2).

To this end, attentive listening to the mystery of God is required, daily immersion in the love of Christ crucified, cultivating prayer with commitment, under the sure guidance of the pure sources of Christian spirituality. Read assiduously the works of the great masters of the spirit. How many treasures of love and faith you have at your fingertips in your beautiful language! And, above all, savor the Sacred Scripture with faith and humility, with the aim of achieving the "sublime knowledge of Christ" ( Phil 3, 8). Only in him, through his Spirit, will you be able to find the strength necessary to overcome the weaknesses experienced so often.

Keep alive the certainty of the divinity of your vocation, with a profound vision of faith nourished in prayer and the sacraments, especially in the holy mystery of the Eucharist, the source and summit of every authentically Christian life. Thus you will easily overcome any uncertainty regarding your identity, and you will walk from fidelity to fidelity, identifying yourself with Christ starting from the beatitudes and being witnesses, at the same time, of the kingdom of God in today's world.

This fidelity implies, first and foremost and as the basis of everything, a growing yearning for dialogue with God, for loving union with him. The consecrated person - I tell you with Saint John of the Cross - "in this way wants God to be religious, to detach himself from everything and for everything to be dead for him, because he himself wants to be his wealth, consolation and pleasant glory" ( St. John of the Cross, Letter 9 ). These longings for union with God will make you experience the truth of the Lord's words: "My yoke is easy, my burden is light" ( Mt 11, 30). His yoke is love, his burden is the weight of love. And this same love will make it sweet.

4. This dimension of total donation and permanent fidelity to Love constitutes the basis of your testimony before the world . In fact, the world is looking for a sincere lifestyle and a kind of work that corresponds to who you really are. The witness is not a simple teacher who teaches what he has learned, but he is the one who lives and acts according to a profound experience of what he believes.

As consecrated people you are first of all specifically consecrated with the profession and practice of the evangelical counsels; thus your life must offer an essentially evangelical testimony. You must continually turn to Christ, the living Gospel, and reproduce it in your life, in your way of thinking and working.

We must recover trust in the value and relevance of the evangelical counsels, which have their origins in the words and example of Jesus Christ (cf. Perfectae Caritatis , 1). Poor like poor Christ; obedient, assuming this attitude of the heart of Christ, who came to redeem the world by doing not his will but the will of the Father who sent him; and living with all its consequences perfect continence for the Kingdom of heaven, as a sign and stimulus of charity and as a source of apostolic fruitfulness in the world. Today the world needs to see the living examples of those who, leaving everything, have embraced life according to the evangelical counsels as an ideal. It is real sincerity in the radical following of Christ that will attract vocations to your Institutes because young people are looking for precisely this evangelical radicality.

The Gospel is definitive and does not pass away. His standards are forever. You cannot do "rereadings" of the Gospel according to the times, adapting to everything the world asks for. On the contrary, it is necessary to read the signs of the times and the problems of today's world, in the unfailing light of the Gospel (cf. John Paul II, Allocutio ad Episcopos, in urbe Puebla aperientis III Coetum Generalem Episcoporum Americae Latinae habita, I, 4- 5, 28 January 1979 : Teachings of John Paul II, II [1979] 192-194).

5. A decisive factor in all the eras in which the Church has had to undertake great changes and reforms has been the fidelity of the religious to its doctrine and its norms. Today we live in one of these eras in which it is necessary to offer the world the testimony of your faithfulness to the Church .

Christians have the right to demand from the consecrated person that he loves the Church, defends it, strengthens it and enriches it with his membership and obedience. This fidelity must not be merely external but mainly internal, profound, joyful and self-sacrificing. You must avoid anything that might make the faithful think that a double magisterium exists in the Church, the authentic one of the Hierarchy and that of theologians and thinkers, or that the norms of the Church have lost their value today.

Quite a few of you dedicate yourself to the theological formation of the faithful, to the direction of educational or assistance centers, and to direct information and training publications. Through all these means try to educate comprehensively, to inculcate profound respect and love for the Church and to ferment a sincere adherence to its Magisterium. Do not be bearers of doubts or "ideologies", but of "certainties" of faith. The true apostle and evangelizer, declared my predecessor Paul VI, “will be he who, even at the cost of renunciations and sacrifices, always seeks the truth that he must transmit to others. He never sells or conceals the truth out of a desire to please men, to cause wonder, nor out of originality or the desire to show off. He never rejects the truth” (Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi , 78).

All this must be kept particularly in mind when the listeners are the nuns who follow your courses or participate in your conferences. First of all, you must faithfully transmit the doctrine of the Church , that doctrine which has been expressed in such rich documents as those of the Second Vatican Council. In the renewal of the life of consecration, which the new times are calling for, fidelity to the thought and norms of the Church must be preserved; more concretely, in the doctrinal and liturgical fields, it is necessary to avoid certain critical positions full of bitterness, which obscure the truth, disconcert the faithful and consecrated people themselves. Fidelity to the Magisterium is not a brake on correct research, but a necessary condition for true progress of authentic doctrine.

6. “ Community life ” is an essential element, not of consecrated life in itself, but of the religious form of this consecration. God has called religious people to sanctify themselves and work in community. Community life does not have the foundation of human friendship, but in the vocation of God, who freely chose you to form a new family, whose purpose is the fullness of charity and whose expression is the observance of the evangelical counsels.

Elements of a true community life are the superior, who enjoys an authority (cf. Optatam Totius , 14) which he must exercise in an attitude of service; the rules and traditions that shape every religious family; and, finally, the Eucharist, which is the principle of every Christian community; in fact, when we participate in the Eucharist, we all eat the same Bread, drink the same Blood and receive the same Spirit. For this reason, the center of our community life cannot be anyone other than Jesus in the Eucharist.

The community dimension must be present in your apostolic activity. The religious is not called to work as an isolated person or on his own behalf. Today more than ever it is necessary to live and work together, first of all within each religious family and then by collaborating with other consecrated persons and members of the Church. Unity is strength. On the other hand, community life offers an extraordinary field for personal sacrifice, for abandoning oneself and thinking of one's brother, embracing everyone with the charity of Christ.

7. The consecrated person is a person who, renouncing the world and himself, has dedicated himself completely to God and, full of God, returns to the world to work for the Kingdom of God and for the Church.

The person of the consecrated person is profoundly marked by this exclusive belonging to God while the object of his service is men and the world. The life and activity of the consecrated cannot be reduced to earthly horizontalism, forgetting this consecration to God and this obligation to imbue the world with God. This theological goal must be present in all your activities.

In the Church there are different charisms, and therefore different services, which complement each other. It would not be right for religious people to enter the field proper to the laity: the consecration of the world from within (cf. Lumen Gentium , 31; Gaudium et Spes , 43).

This does not mean that your religious consecration and your eminently religious ministries do not have profound repercussions on the world and on the change of its structures. If the hearts of men do not change, the structures of the world will not be able to change effectively (cf. PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi , 18). The ministry of religious people is mainly aimed at obtaining the conversion of hearts to God, the creation of new men and to indicate those fields in which seculars, consecrated people or simple Christians can and must act to change the structures of the world.

In this regard I want to express my deepest esteem, combined with my cordial greeting, for all the members of the male Secular Institutes of Spain and those present here. You have your own particular type of consecration and your own place in the Church. Nourished with a solid spirituality, be faithful to the call of Christ and the Church, to be valid instruments of transformation of the world from within.

Thinking about the theme of the next Synod, I would like to invite you, religious priests, to consider the sacrament of Confession as one of your main ministries. By hearing confessions and forgiving sins, you are effectively building the Church, shedding upon it the balm that heals the wounds of sin. If a renewal of the sacrament of Penance is to be achieved in the Church, it will be necessary for the religious priest to dedicate himself with joy to this ministry.

8. Before finishing I want to remind you of a characteristic of the Spanish religious which, perhaps, is undergoing a temporary eclipse and which it is necessary to restore in all its ancient splendor: I am referring to the missionary generosity with which thousands of Spanish consecrated people dedicated their lives to the apostolic activity of establishing the Church in lands yet to be evangelized. Do not let the bonds of flesh and blood, nor the affection you rightly have for the homeland where you were born and where you learned to love Christ, become bonds that limit your freedom (cf. PAUL VI Evangelii Nuntiandi , 69) and put the fullness of your donation to the Lord and his Church is in danger. Always remember that the missionary spirit of a given portion of the Church is the exact measure of its vitality and authenticity.

9. Finally, always maintain a tender devotion for the Mother of God. Your piety towards her must preserve the simplicity of the first moments. May the Mother of Jesus, who is also our Mother, a model of self-giving to the Lord and his mission, accompany you, make the cross sweet for you and obtain for you, in any circumstance of life, that unalterable joy and peace that only the Lord can give. As a pledge of which I affectionately give my cordial blessing.

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